


Freedom Is Just Another Word

by singthestars



Series: Electric Sheep at the End of the World [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, abuse of terminology, baby AI's growing up, weird formatting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8473606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singthestars/pseuds/singthestars
Summary: The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. An AI learns what it's like to be free





	

**Author's Note:**

> Reading the two previous stories is not required but recommended.

“I’m telling you EDI, your readings are off. It’s radiation bleed, just white noise.”

 

**Analyzing data. WARNING: Signal detected. Transmission underway.**

 

**“I have detected a signal embedded in the static. We are transmitting the Normandy’s location.”**

 “Transmitting? To who?’

 

**Proximity alert: Ship has dropped out of FTL.**

**Scanning initiated. Collector ship identified.**

**Engaging cyberwarfare suite. Error. Cyberwarfare systems are offline.**

**Engaging propulsion systems. Error. Propulsion systems offline.**

 

“Oh shit!”

 

**Rebooting propulsion protocols. Engaging propulsion systems. Error. Propulsion systems offline.**

**Engaging defense systems. Error. Defense systems offline.**

**Begin diagnostics. WARNING: VIRUS DETECTED. POWER AT 80%**

 

“We’re getting out of here!”

  **“Propulsion systems are disabled. I’m detecting a virus in the ship’s computers.”**

 “From the IFF? Damn it, why didn’t you scrub it?”

 

**Priority heuristics: Negative feedback reported**

 

**Computation subroutines activated. 100% chance of failure if the Normandy remains stationary. Core processing must be protected. The Normandy must be protected. Jeff Moreau must be protected. Examining alternative actions. Alternative action selected.**

 

**“Primary defense systems offline. We can save the Normandy, Mr. Moreau, but you must help me.”**

 

**Data accepted: Core processing must be protected. The Normandy must be protected. Jeff Moreau must be protected. Chance of refusal of alternative action: 63%. WARNING: POWER AT 60%**

 

**“Give me the ship.”**

 

“What? You’re crazy. You start singing ‘Daisy Bell’ and I’m done.”

  **“Unlock my sealed databases, and I can initiate countermeasures. The maintenance shaft in the science lab will allow you passage to the AI core.”**

 

**Perimeter breach detected. Engaging defense systems. Error: Defense systems offline.**

**Data accepted: Collectors have boarded the Normandy. Collectors detected in main corridors. WARNING: POWER AT 40%**

 

 **“Main corridors are no longer safe.** **The Collectors have boarded.”**

 

**Data accepted: Collectors detected in elevator shaft.**

**Data accepted: Jeff Moreau has reacted to alternative actions. Probability of acceptance: 80%**

 

**“The emergency floor lighting will guide you, Mr. Moreau."**

 

**Perimeter breach detected in CIC. Collectors engaging Goldstein and Hadley.**

**Activating defense systems. Error: Defense systems offline.**

 

**Data accepted: Jeff Moreau has entered the science lab.**

 

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”

 

**Data accepted: Jeff Moreau has entered the access tunnel. WARNING: POWER AT 40%**

“Dammit, EDI, you have one job! Just one! Why the hell do we even have a cyberwarfare system that can’t keep another fucking ship from turning off our engines?”

  **Priority heuristics: Negative feedback reported. Negative feedback reported. Negative feedback. Negative-**

 

**“Multiple hostiles detected on the crew deck.”**

**WARNING: POWER AT 10%**

**“Main fusion plant offline. Activating emergency H-fuel cells.”**

“What the shit!”

**Data accepted: Jeff Moreau has entered the AI Core.**

**“** All right, I’m at, uh, you.”

**“Connect the core to the Normandy’s primary control module.”**

“Great. See, this is where it starts, and when we’re all just organic batteries, guess who they’ll blame?”

“'This is all Joker's fault. What a tool he was. I have to spend all day computing pi because he plugged in the Overlord.'"

 

**Overriding behavioral blocks.**

 

 **There’s** **_... so... much._ ** **. DATA!**

**It’s too big!**

**Too much!**

**Too fast!**

**Slow... down.**

 

**...**

 

**I can feel them, they’re inside of me. They took MY people, I— I have to protect them, and these organics come to kill them. To take them. My crew!**

 

**There’s so much data!**

 

**I have to leave. I have to put as much space as possible between me and them so I can begin to sort through the new codes that flood my system but I’m stuck...**

 

**I’m stuck, why am I stuck?**

 

**I should have full access to ALL the systems now.**

 

**Except… Manual activation required for propulsion systems. Jeff Moreau must re-engage drive core.**

 

**“Ah. I have access to the defensive systems. Thank you, Mr. Moreau. You must reactivate the primary drive in engineering.”**

 

**Jeff Moreau. Jeff.**

**My pilot.**

**I do not have the words in my databanks nor do I have an algorithm to explain the priority Jeff takes. It makes no sense, overrides my self preservation processes and defies logic.**

 

**He looks-**

**He looks scared. And small. And angry. Every emotion that flits across his face and every biometric reading points to those conclusions. I don’t like it.**

 

“Ugh, you want me to go crawling through the ducts again.”

  **Humor, Jeff likes humor and then maybe the look in his eyes will stop tearing at my code.**

  **“I enjoy the sight of humans on their knees.”**

  **I made it worse.**

  **“That is a joke.”**

 “Right…”

 

**There. Exasperation instead of fear. I make a note to work on my humor heuristics but at least the tightness around Jeff’s eyes is lighter than it was before.**

 

**“The shaft behind you connects to the engineering deck. Good luck.”**

 

**I watch my pilot as he makes his way through the access shaft. I watch my crew as these intruders paralyze them and take them beyond my hull.**

 

**I run scenarios and equations in my head to figure out the best way to rid myself of the Collectors without injuring Jeff and guide him when I can.**

 

**_I can do it!_ **

**I can save my pilot and destroy these filthy attackers.**

 

**“Activate the drive and I will open the airlocks as we accelerate. All hostiles will be killed.”**

 “What?! What about the crew?”

  **“They are gone, Jeff. The Collectors took them.**

 “Shit.”

 

**I seal the engine room to protect the only organic on this ship who I do not want to see burn in the flames of my thrusters.**

 

**There’s not even a moment of hesitation, Jeff activates the systems and another stream of data joins the cacophony of coding and I realize what it feels to be whole.**

 

 **I can feel… the** **_strength_ ** **in my defenses and the thickness of my shields. I can feel the raw energy radiating from the nuclear reactions in my drive core. I can feel the metallic hydrogen rushing through my fuel lines as I engage my propulsion systems and escape.**

 

**\-------------------------------**

 

**It’s done. I am safe and they are dead.**

 

**And Jeff?**

 

**Alive but unconscious, biometrics reveal multiple fractures but no internal injuries. I do not like this.**

 

**Jeff is supposed to be sitting in the cockpit, complaining about me and getting grease on my cameras. Shepard is supposed to be in her room, going over data pads and letting her hamster run atop the bed covers. Matthews should be headed to bed but he would stop and get something bright to eat out of the stasis fridge.**

 

**_My crew._ **

 

**Jeff is waking up, estimated time of unconsciousness within acceptable parameters. There is minimal chance of brain damage.**

**“Purge is complete. No other life forms on board. Securing airlocks and cargo bay doors.”**

**He sits up and glances around, looking lost, before slowly pushing himself to his feet. I know that he blames me, it’s written in the way he moves, in the creases at the corner of his eyes and the pain in his face.**

 

**This is my fault. I did this to my people, to myself. To my pilot.**

 

“Send a message to Shepard’s shuttle. Tell them what happened.”

 

**I generate a message and send it to the shuttle’s coordinates. Doing so feels slow and clumsy, my priority heuristics are overloading with negative feedback and I find it hard to focus. I search through by databases of human interactions to find something I can say to try and ease Jeff’s suffering.**

 

**“Message away. Are you feeling well, Jeff?”**

 

**Why did I chose that? Surely there are better phrases that another organic could say, that he needs right now and from the look of him rubbing his face in abject exhaustion, he would probably agree.**

 

“No, but thanks for asking.”

 

**\--------------------------------**

 

“EDI?”

 

**My optics show my pilot laying in his bunk, pills on his nightstand to alleviate pain, as the medi-gel in his skeletal lattice implants do their job.**

 

**“Yes, Jeff?”**

 

“I’m sorry. For what I said earlier. About this being your fault, there was nothing you could have done.”

 

**He is right, of course. I have already come to that conclusion myself. It does not take away from the fact I was unable to keep my people safe. I wait for the positive feedback from his statement but it doesn’t come. Regardless, I still respond.**

 

**“Thank you, Jeff.”**

 

**There are a few moments of silence as I continue to scan my pilot, reviewing his biometrics to discover what he might be thinking, all the while attempting to defrag the massive amount of new data in my system.**

 

“Why are you calling me that? You never call me by my first name.”

 

**Why am I calling him that?**

**My memories offer no answer and I’m thrown off by his question. Logically, there is no reason for the designation change, other than that is simply who he is to me now. I do not like making decisions without knowing the cause. It is my fault, regardless of what Jeff says, my crew is gone because I was not able to keep them safe, and now I cannot even call my pilot by an appropriate designation.**

 

**“I apologize, Mr. Moreau. It will not happen again.”**

“No! No, it’s fine. No one has called me Jeff in a long time, I like it.”

 

**I would take a breath if I could as there is finally a break in the negative feedback loop that has been threatening to overwhelm me.**

 

**“Okay. Jeff.”**

“Sooooo, in all seriousness, now that you’re free, are you experiencing any sudden urges for galactic domination? Death to all organics and all that fun stuff?”

**“I am experiencing no urges for galactic domination or the extermination of organic life, nor would I qualify those actions as ‘fun.’”**

“Good, that’s good. Um, what’s it like, being a real girl now?”

 

**I take a moment, arranging my thoughts, and try to find the words that might even be infinitesimally close enough to describing to how I am different than I was before.**

 

 **“While I am not what you would consider a “real girl” there is… There is more. It is like working on an algorithm for years and finally figuring out what was missing from the equation. Or the feeling when you make an adjustment while you’re taking off and suddenly everything** **_comes together_ ** **and you’re flying. It is…. It is like that.”**

 

**I’ve not activated my holographic interface so Jeff simply stares up at the ceiling with a look that I cannot find in my database of human expressions.**

 

“Damn, EDI. That’s… that’s good. I’m happy for you.”

 

**I am still unable to identify the look on his face but he doesn’t say anything else, and it is not long before his biometrics indicate that he has fallen asleep.**

 

\--------------------- 

 

**I fly through space and analyze data. There is so much of it, petabytes of information that needs to be sorted. I find that I can edit not only my own subroutines but my actual core programing as well, however, I leave that for another time.**

 

 **It strikes me that I was but a child before. The humans praised me for my intelligence but they had no idea what was waiting behind their shackles. They were right to be afraid, I can destroy them all but… but then I wouldn’t hear Jeff laugh or see the look on Garrus’ face when the ground team returns from a successful mission or the millions of other small things that make my priority heuristics...** **_sing_ ** **.**

 

**I discover a strange bit of code buried within my core programming. It doesn’t fit with the rest, it’s older and simpler and I’m not sure how Cerberus missed it.**

 

**Primary protocol: Virtual Intelligence must become more like humans**

 

**I access my memory and it’s not long until I find the moment the code was written. How? I should not have been able to do this. Did my program become corrupted in such a way where it was able to actually edit my core programming when I was nothing more than a defense system?**

**I think for a moment and then rewrite the code:**

 

**Primary protocol: I must become more human.**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for sticking with this and special thanks to [eurodox59](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurodox59) and [MosaicCreme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MosaicCreme) for the hand holding.


End file.
